moderatecentrist
@moderatecentrist@feddit.uk
- Comment on Green Party wins Gorton and Denton by-election with Labour pushed into third by Reform 3 days ago:
Yes the same issue has brought about Conservative governments. In 2015 the Tories got only 36.8% of the vote but this gave them 50.8% of the seats.
I’d like score/rank voting based mixed member
I will admit that I don’t know the details of the different kinds of proportional voting. As long as a system would result in a House of Commons that more accurately and proportionately reflects voters, I think that would be a good thing
- Comment on Green Party wins Gorton and Denton by-election with Labour pushed into third by Reform 4 days ago:
I think the German system looks pretty good. Their voting system leads to a much more representative legislature. Another example when looking at proportional representation is the Netherlands, but their system seems to lead to lots of lengthy coalition negotiations and squabbling before they form a government.
Germany, for much of the last 20 years, has had a coalition government between the big centre-right and big centre-left blocs. E.g. in the 2005 election, 69.4% of voters backed either the Union or SPD, who together made up the subsequent coalition government. Compare that to the UK where we have a Labour government who, whether you like them or not, were only voted for by 33.7% of voters.
- Comment on Green Party wins Gorton and Denton by-election with Labour pushed into third by Reform 5 days ago:
Yes the voting systems of both the UK and US are broken because they’re unrepresentative. Hillary Clinton in 2016 got about 3 million more votes than Trump did. In many countries that would have made her the president. But the anti-democratic electoral college system in the US meant that Trump was made president instead.
- Comment on Green Party wins Gorton and Denton by-election with Labour pushed into third by Reform 5 days ago:
True. I think voters want to see politicians who embody values that voters like. The pitch of “vote for us just because we’re not quite as bad as the other guys”, without stating appealing values of your own, doesn’t really inspire anybody
- Comment on Green Party wins Gorton and Denton by-election with Labour pushed into third by Reform 6 days ago:
They hope to pay on “it is us, or Reform” which is party before country and could backfire and massively damage the country.
True. I don’t think it’s a popular message with the public. Clearly people in Gorton and Denton thought “actually we don’t have to vote for Labour as the only alternative to Reform; we can vote for the Greens instead”.
- Comment on Green Party wins Gorton and Denton by-election with Labour pushed into third by Reform 1 week ago:
What’s great about those numbers is Con+Reform is soooo far behind Lab+Lib+Greens.
Because of our crappy first-past-the-post system though, the most likely next government (if an election were held soon) would be a Reform government, or maybe a Reform/Conservative government.
Reform’s support in recent polls has only been around 24% - 30%. So around 70% of British voters don’t support Reform. Nonetheless, because Reform polls better than any other individual party, they could run the next government. Like how Labour in 2024 only got 34% of votes, but this gave them 63% of seats.
If the anti-Reform vote continues to be split between Labour/Greens/LibDems/SNP (and even Tories, since there will be Tory voters who don’t like Reform) then Farage will be the next prime minister. Surely the best counter to Reform would be a big tent centrist or centre-left party with wide appeal.
- Comment on Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor arrested on suspicion of misconduct in public office 2 weeks ago:
I wonder where he celebrates his birthdays. Maybe Pizza Express in Woking.
- Comment on Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor arrested on suspicion of misconduct in public office 2 weeks ago:
When I saw this news my reaction was to say “lol”
He’s a bit of a silly billy isn’t he
- Comment on A succulent meal 3 weeks ago:
Add some veg, and some butter for the bread, and it’s a good meal
- Comment on The world is trying to log off U.S. tech 4 weeks ago:
I was reading an opinion piece about this sort of thing earlier today, “Euro firms must ditch Uncle Sam’s clouds and go EU-native”. It opens by saying:
I’m an eighth-generation American, and let me tell you, I wouldn’t trust my data, secrets, or services to a US company these days for love or money.
- Comment on What Is 'Pathways' And Who Is 'Amelia?' The Controversial Memes About The Viral U.K. Anti-Immigration Goth Girl Explained 1 month ago:
It’s just right-wing keyboard warriors wishing they had an anti-immigration girlfriend who looks like that character
- Comment on We need to back ‘patriotic’ winners to build the UK’s first £1tn tech giant, British AI expert says 1 month ago:
If the UK is serious about creating “$100 billion-plus” companies which rival “Microsoft, Google, Nvidia and the like” then maybe the UK should rejoin the EU and help to create big European tech companies.
Look at Airbus, a big European company which does very well. They’re registered as a European company rather than a company of any particular nation. They have operations across Europe. Maybe that large scale is what allows them to be so successful.
- Comment on What's it going to take to truly stop the US? 1 month ago:
I think this is the first time I’ve seen someone from Lemmy.ml admit something negative about China.
To me it seems that the US, China, and Russia are all behaving imperialistically, which is pretty worrying.
- Comment on Reddit overtakes TikTok in UK thanks to search algorithms and gen z 2 months ago:
I don’t love Reddit but I prefer it to TikTok. So I would say this is slightly good news.
- Comment on Make me feel like a man 2 months ago:
I don’t want to be too pedantic but it’s actually a milkshake. “Milkshaking” (throwing a milkshake at someone, usually as a political protest) has happened a few times in the UK to prominent political figures (usually right-wing figures). Milkshaking even has a Wikipedia page.
- Comment on Today is the birthday of His Majesty the King 2 months ago:
Yeah I think Ireland’s system is pretty good. They have the Taoiseach, the equivalent of our prime minister. Then they have a president who is mostly ceremonial.
Ah yes, British democracy. The bringer of Brexit, Boris Johnson.
Arguably though, if the UK was even more democratic, then those two phenomena may have turned out differently. E.g. Boris only won 43.6% of the votes in the 2019 election, which of course is a minority. If the UK had proportional representation then I guess we’d be more likely to see consensus-building leaders ruling the country. Germany has some degree of proportional representation and they have been led by coalitions between the two main blocs (centre-right Union and centre-left SPD) for much of the last 20 years.
With Brexit, maybe there should have been a second referendum to determine what sort of Brexit would be implemented, since that question was not asked in the first referendum. The UK could have taken a path similar to Norway or Iceland, being outside the EU, but still taking part in the single market.
- Comment on Today is the birthday of His Majesty the King 2 months ago:
I haven’t checked my account on here for a while but now I’ve seen your replies.
Maybe we will just have different views on the monarchy. If you like the monarchy then fair enough. I think I would prefer an elected official having command over the armed forces and police (which is surely already de facto the case) instead of a monarch. The elected official would probably be somewhat competent because they have had to win the backing of the British people in an election.
- Comment on Today is the birthday of His Majesty the King 3 months ago:
Reform UK is only supported by about a third of the electorate at the moment. More than any other single party, but if there was an election for a British head of state, and that election ended up being a choice between Farage and one other person, Farage could very well lose.
Also you said in another post that “President Farage could remove elections”. I think that if we have an elected head of state then they should only have similar powers to what the King has now. Parliament should still be sovereign.
- Comment on Today is the birthday of His Majesty the King 3 months ago:
I think one of the best aspects of the UK is political freedom. Perhaps I am a subject of the King (I don’t know if that’s legally true but it might be), but in any case, I can still say that I hope the UK will get rid of the monarchy and replace it with a democratically elected head of state.
- Comment on NHS staff who visit patients at home say St George’s flags can mean ‘no-go zones’ 3 months ago:
Fair enough, but according to a couple of sites that Wikipedia refers to, Churchill originally didn’t know that the outward facing gesture was rude until he was told about it. If true then I guess his gesture was intended to mean “here is a V for victory” instead of “fuck off you lot” or “fuck the Germans”.
- Comment on NHS staff who visit patients at home say St George’s flags can mean ‘no-go zones’ 3 months ago:
It depends on the context doesn’t it. Lots of people will fly the England flag or wear an England shirt during a football tournament, and all they mean by that is “I support the England team” without a further political meaning. But the meaning of the current flag-flying from lamp posts seems to essentially be “we don’t want immigrants in the UK” which can make the flags intimidating (which is probably the exact intention).
Here’s another example of context changing meaning. Churchill used to give a two-fingered salute (see picture below), and his intended meaning of that salute was that it was a “V” for “victory” in WW2. But of course these days, that same outwards two-fingered salute means “fuck off”. Context changes the meaning.
- Comment on UK ‘to lose 600,000 workers to illness without better health support at work’ 3 months ago:
You might be right about short-sightedness. I read this article a couple days ago which talks about short-sighted cuts to the F-35 programme, which then add costs in the long run. For example:
A cost-saving move to delay by six years building infrastructure for the naval squadron that operates the F-35 jets means the cost for that construction will almost treble to £154m from £56m.
- Comment on Five grooming gang survivors tell PM they will stay on panel only if Jess Phillips remains in post 4 months ago:
I think Jess Phillips seems like a decent person, I’ve watched her speak about the issue of violence against women and girls before. Here’s what the grooming survivors who support her have said:
“Jess Phillips has remained impartial to the process, only listening to feedback [and] we want her to remain in position for the duration of the process for consistency,” they wrote.
“Her previous experience and drive to reduce VAWG [violence against women and girls] and her clear passion and commitment is important to us.”
They praised Phillips, who they said had “devoted her life to hearing and amplifying the voices of women and girls who would otherwise have been unheard” and had helped some of them access support.
- Comment on Apparently Palantir can access the content of social media accounts that were deleted a decade ago. 4 months ago:
For some time now, I have written stuff on the internet under the assumption that one day, my identity will be publicly tied to everything I wrote. Surely in the future it will be easy to give an example of my writing to an AI bot, perhaps combined with some facts about my life, and the bot would be able to find anonymous posts that were likely written by me, across the internet.
- Comment on Family seek £180k-a-year tutor from 'socially appropriate background' to prepare one-year-old son for ‘Eton or Harrow’ 4 months ago:
Probably beyond my hoodwinking skills. Also I’m not northern myself, I was just wondering what kind of person they would consider to have a “socially appropriate background”. Posh accent, wealthy family, and from South East England, I would expect.
- Comment on Family seek £180k-a-year tutor from 'socially appropriate background' to prepare one-year-old son for ‘Eton or Harrow’ 4 months ago:
I was a manager at Woolworths back in the day, I swear… but this family would probably say my accent isn’t posh enough to tutor their child.
- Comment on Kew woman fined £150 for pouring coffee down drain in Richmond 4 months ago:
The article says the fine has now been cancelled, but originally someone from the council defended the fine by saying:
We are committed to protecting Richmond’s waterways and keeping our borough’s streets clean and safe.
Pretty ridiculous. Coffee is an organic substance right? Made from roasted coffee beans. I could maybe understand if someone was pouring industrial chemicals into the sewers but coffee surely shouldn’t be a problem.
Also of course big water companies get away with dumping sewage into rivers, but a very small amount of coffee apparently needs to be harshly punished. One rule for big business and another rule for common people.
- Family seek £180k-a-year tutor from 'socially appropriate background' to prepare one-year-old son for ‘Eton or Harrow’www.lbc.co.uk ↗Submitted 4 months ago to unitedkingdom@feddit.uk | 4 comments
- Comment on Ruby Central tries to make peace after 'hostile takeover' 4 months ago:
All societies have morals right? In pretty much any country, if you say something that is considered bad in that country, people won’t like you. That’s not censorship, it’s just morals. In many countries, racism is usually considered bad, so if you say something that seems racist, many people won’t like you.
If DHH wanted to make a point about culture in London then it’s possible to do that without tying it to ethnicity.
- Comment on Ruby Central tries to make peace after 'hostile takeover' 4 months ago:
Let’s not say that reverse racism is a real thing, because that’s an imaginary racist trope.
My view is that racism can happen to any ethnicity: black, brown, white, anybody. It depends on the situation. If a business run entirely by white people disallows entry to a black person because they’re black, that’s racist, but if the races were reversed (a business run entirely by black people disallows entry to a white person because they’re white), I’d say that’s also racist. In fact if I end up talking to a white person about racism I might deliberately give them an example of a situation where a white person could experience racial discrimination, because that might make them think “fair point, I would dislike it if someone was racist to me, so maybe racism is a bad thing”.
